Windows 7

One of the recent additions to the Windows version of the Google Chrome web browser was support for the Windows 7 taskbar to show preview thumbnails of all open tabs of the web browser in the taskbar. That feature addition caused some controversy as it was not possible to disable it.

All that needs to be done to disable tab previews in the Windows 7 taskbar is to run Google Chrome in Windows Vista Service Pack 2 compatibility mode. The taskbar preview feature is not available in Windows Vista and will therefor stop working.

To do this right-click the Google Chrome executable and select Properties from the context menu. Now switch to the Compatibility tab and check the “Run this program in compatibility mode for” option and select Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) from the list of available options.

A click on OK will apply the changes and disable the taskbar previews in Windows 7. Google Chrome will still show the active tab if the user moves the mouse over the taskbar icon but that is the default behavior and cannot be changed.